Eclipse owner asks court for avionics code

As Eclipse owners wait for the Chapter 7 liquidation of the company to go to court, a Louisiana firm that owns two Eclipse 500s has filed a motion that could “turn the whole process upside down,” according to the AVweb newsletter.

Gray Oil and Gas Company and Gray and Company Inc. have filed a motion with the court to compel the bankruptcy trustee to turn over access to the source codes and fundamental building blocks of the highly proprietary computerized aircraft systems, the newsletter reported on April 29.

‘The technology was developed at great expense by Eclipse and is considered fundamental to the operation of the aircraft and that is the whole point,” the newsletter stated, quoting a Gray executive: “The desire is to divorce the existing owners from a potentially hostile intellectual property owner” who might use exclusive rights to the software to compel existing owners to pay high prices for repairs and upgrades.